Kemi Predicts Burnham Will Call a General Election in December as Poll Shows Reform Would Now Win Fewer Seats than Tories or Labour

Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch has predicted that Andy Burnham will call a General Election in December as a new poll puts Reform on course to win fewer seats than the Conservatives or Labour. The Mail has the story.

Badenoch said Andy Burnham was a “gambler” who wanted a fresh mandate to tax and spend more taxpayers’ money if he won.

She is the latest figure to suggest an election is not far away as speculation mounts that the Prime Minister could go to the country well ahead of the 2029 deadline.

Speaking to LBC radio, Badenoch said: “I think he might fancy his chances, but we fancy ours as well.”

She added: “I’ve said that if he cannot fund defence, which he needs to fund by cutting welfare, then he should call an election. That’s why John Healey resigned. He said the money that was going into defence was not enough.”

But an election would be a risk for all the main parties. A major YouGov analysis shows Reform would be only the third-largest party at Westminster if an election was held today, having been the largest party in a similar poll last year. 

The findings suggest an election now would result in a hung parliament, with Labour losing 170 seats.

While it would still have the most MPs, it would be short of a majority unless Burnham could put together an unlikely ‘rainbow coalition’ with the Liberal Democrats, Greens and the Scottish National Party.

It came as Badenoch unveiled a new Tory policy to cut the welfare bill by preventing claimants from spending their money on alcohol, cigarettes and gambling.

The Tory Leader dismissed suggestions that the state should not decide what welfare claimants can and cannot spend their benefits on.

Asked whether her plan was “too paternalistic” and “infantilising” welfare claimants, Badenoch shot back: “But it’s not their money, it’s taxpayers’ money.”

“This is the thing that we keep forgetting,” Badenoch told GB News.

“The state’s not telling any of us how to spend the money we earn, but if people are being given taxpayers’ money to survive, then we don’t want them gambling with it.”

If the Conservatives were to win their projected 130 seats, it would be a nine-seat improvement on the party’s performance at the 2024 General Election, when it lost its majority in the House of Commons.

The polling suggests Reform UK, which currently has eight MPs, would still make significant gains to finish with 123 seats.

With 253 seats between them, a Conservative-Reform UK coalition would fail to pass the 326-seat bar for a majority in the House of Commons.

YouGov’s modelling – using multilevel regression and poststratification – also showed Labour would be the largest party with 241 seats, with the Liberal Democrats on 71, SNP on 40, Plaid Cymru on 15 and the Green Party on nine. 

It also stressed that in more than a third of seats (37%), the winning margin is less than five points, meaning they could go either way. 

But In Reform targets this rises to 67%, making them highly vulnerable to tactical voting. 

Worth reading in full.

What a mess, and raises the terrifying prospects of another five years under a fiscally incontinent, immigration-happy Left-wing government. Worth bearing in mind, though, that opinion polls consistently underestimate support for the Right and its policies. Plus, of course, once an election is underway, the polls can shift a long way – as Theresa May once discovered.